Disney World's Worst Ever Ride: The History of Journey Into YOUR Imagination

One of the DUMBEST decisions Disney ever did at a theme park was "upgrade" this ride.

“Tiana’s Bayou Adventure is the worst retheme Disney has ever made!” Journey into YOUR Imagination: “Hold my Lightbulb.”

Being 19 now, never being able to see 80's to early 90's epcot is what I feel I missed out on the most

Disney was like, "nice ride you've got here, Kodak... It would be a shame if anything happened to it" (and then Disney cracked its knuckles and built Journey Into YOUR Imagination 😢)

journey into imagination>journey into imagination with figment> journey into your imagination.

My family first came down to Disney in January of 1987. I still remember everything about the trip so vividly, and after several other trips down after, I moved to Orlando in 1998 and still live there. But in January of ‘87, Epcot was just barely over 4 years old, and pretty much exactly how it originally was a few years ago. It was by FAR the highlight of that trip for me back then, and it’s still my favorite Disney park. I miss the ways that it was in the 80’s so so much. Not only was everything new, but back then both sections of the park actually taught you something, while still being outstandingly fun. Elements like audio animatronics back then too were still mind blowing tech too. And before the internet and connected world we live in today, everything was an exciting surprise. You couldn’t watch a million POV ride-throughs in HD on YouTube ahead of time, or hear a million reviews. So your anticipation was off the chart. Back then too, people were patiently focused on actually riding the ride. Not about making another social media post or taking a selfie. I wish I could go back to that year for just one day to re-experience it. I do still like the parks today overall, but not like I used to. To this day though, I still have a plush Figment from “Journey” that I got as a kid in 1987.

It’s simply incredible this shit stain of a ride remains open, but splash mountain was replaced.

Imagine the best ‘effect’ in your ride is a Brick going thru a fake glass table

I went on Journey into your imagination not long after it opened with family. After our ride, we were all surveyed. We all sad the same things, "boring" "where is Figment?" "why did they get rid of the original ride?" "what does this have to do about imagination when it's based off the senses?" I'm glad they did eventually change it again to add Figment back in, but it still lacks the creativity and message of the original ride. Why they continue to ignore this ride and not make another version with Dreamfinder and Figment, I do not know....

If it were me and I had no budget or oversight, I’d make a new dream finder, maybe son or great great grandson of dream finder, switch the steampunk aesthetic to solar punk, and make everything look hyper futuristic, but do that to every element of the original so you still have the “future” in future world and you still have everything that made the original beloved, but with a new modern look and feel so it feels like a step forward instead of a look back.

I had no idea that ride was once so much better. I found the ride pretty obnoxious, and the original looks absolutely gorgeous and beautiful. What a terrible shame.

This was the ride equivalent of the first “Don’t Hug Me, I’m Scared”

This turned into rambling, sorry. I have a lot of history with this attraction.😅 My first WDW trip was in 1988 when I was 4. Some of my first memories are of WDW, Journey Into Imagination being one of the big ones. I still loved it when we went back when I was 9 in 1993, and THAT version of ImageWorks was the first time I ever used a stylus to color an image on a TV monitor. It enchanted me and my parents had to pull me away eventually. 😂 I'm pretty sure that's the reason why I became a digital artist as a teenager and now a digital illustrator and colorist for a living as an adult. Now I just color on a Cintiq instead of a CRT. lol I hated this new iteration with the fire of a thousand suns when it replaced the OG ride and it's still a travesty in its third version. I wish they'd restore it and just get rid of ImageWorks entirely. It serves no purpose anymore now that technology advances so quickly, which is exactly what happened to Innoventions. Awesome in the '90s, lame and useless after ~2005. It's so sad that I've heard people who never got to experience the original Journey bitch about Figment being obnoxious and annoying, because he wasn't like that originally! He was just childlike and excitable. 😕 I hope Disney eventually overhauls that entire pavilion again, trashes the ride, and starts over from scratch while bringing back Dreamfinder. If you want to update him, make him the young steampunk version from the Figment comics! That would be awesome! I've been seeing more and more Dreamfinder stuff in Epcot over the last few years, so I've got everything on my body crossed in hopes that Disney is slowly reintroducing him so that can actually happen.

only been 1 minute and this video is already great like usual

The comics are easily some of the best things they put out involving Figment and Dreamfinder. I highly recommend them. Also, I should mention a few years ago, a Figment movie was announced. Given how well the merchandise frequently sells, I’m shocked they haven’t given the ride an all new iteration. The character frequently makes appearances, especially at festivals. They should do something new with the character for a new ride as the old ride is showing its age.

23:45 Michael Eisner eventually did find a good outlet for this humor, as he went on to be the executive producer of Bojack Horseman.

I've experienced all of them... and none of them will compare to the original.

I was actually lucky enough to see the Dream-Catcher in 2021 at the Destination D23 event. The archives had an exhibit and they brought it into one of the rooms in the Contemporary. It was really cool seeing it because I was born years after the original closed. I always enjoyed seeing it on Mouse Gear but it was awesome getting to get really close to it and take in all the details.

I knew about Journey Into Imagination before I ever went to Disney World because it was prominently featured in the Epcot promotional VHS tape (which I watched MANY times because it was fun and colorful and pretty much the closest thing we had to TikTok in the mid-90's). The first time I went to Epcot was when I was six years old in 2000. It didn't occur to me until we got home from the vacation that we never went on the ride with the funny purple dragon, so I just assumed we'd been so busy that we never got around to riding it. I was disappointed, but I figured that I'd get to ride it if we got to go on another Disney World vacation. The plot twist is that we did, in fact, go on that ride. Except it was Journey Into Your Imagination and it was so bad that I could barely even remember it a week later. A few months ago I finally did go on my second ever Disney World vacation. Journey Into Imagination With Figment is an okay ride. Nothing more, nothing less, still not particularly memorable. What IS memorable though is the image of the rainbow hallway from that old VHS tape. It's been a few decades since I've seen it, but the few seconds of footage of people walking through those neon rings of color are vividly cemented into my mind because more imagination went into that one hallway than either of this ride's reimaginings combined.

Yet another George Browning classic